"But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government." Andrew Jackson

Followers

Friday, June 22, 2012

Francis Scott Key penned the words that became Our national anthem, the Star-spangled Banner, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812. The War of 1812 set the stage for the several sovereign United States to shine as a legitimate nation and a force to be reckoned with to any who thought they could overthrow or undermine its prosperity of spirit. The anthem written during that bombardment would not become our National Anthem for more than a century! Yet its spirit has been our guide through two centuries.

The draw in 1814 happened where just over a quarter century before a rag-tag bunch of upstart colonies dared to declare themselves independent of tyranny, and went on to win their revolution, seen at least by old, established European countries' royalty and their allies within the colonies, as nothing more than a brief tantrum giving the sovereign United States its "fifteen minutes of fame". That it truly had the stamina to sustain a government founded on good and noble principles as freedom and liberty for all its citizens was not taken by the royalist world to be realistic, nor did the old world think it would last. At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberations, “A lady asked Dr. Benjamin Franklin ‘Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy?’ ‘A republic, replied the Doctor, if you can keep it.’” [Dr. James McHenry, a Maryland delegate to the Convention]

What the war of 1812 did was to show that citizens of several sovereign States, united, took their Constitution seriously, their rights as inviolate, and its limitation on government to heart. Their nation and its statutes were worthy of fighting and dying for, as those principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence were embedded in each American citizen as righteous claim to life itself. The winning of the War of 1812 - or at least to a standstill with 3 powerful groups (Canada, Britain, and Tecumseh's tribes) - proved that the nation was not a "flash in a pan", but rather a strong and lasting force, willing to die for more than mere possessions and wealth. It was a war to prove the lasting intent of a people to cherish freedom, with no option for less. It was a war that showed the nation’s fifteen minutes was truly longer-lasting, and would not only survive, but thrive for the next two hundred years, and hopefully forever.

Now, it is 2012, and that noble-minded two hundred year reign appears to have reached its end. Its citizens, especially those currently populating governments at all levels, either can’t or won’t openly stand to defend principles of liberty that rallied our forefathers to expend their wealth and blood in its creation, risking their very lives by signing a Declaration of Independence, which had they failed was signed confession to treason, punishable by death.

We have, in the intervening 2 centuries since the end of that War of 1812, allowed ourselves to be, in all practical senses, reduced to serfs, abdicating hard-won rights to tyrants and their "officials" who rob our equity for their own power and livelihoods, forced back to an existence prior to when the Barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. In short, we are fast becoming dependent slaves to federal agencies and their unctuous "officials" whose hands are tied, cowering before over-bearing government, and ultimately to the foreign, UN-Globalist [Agenda 21 - http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/Agenda21.pdf ] tyranny so many seem to think is humanity and the earth's "salvation". Tragedy worthy of Shakespeare!

Happy Independence Day [aka Fourth of July] from Lark Chadwick and Jim Greaves